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Southern Africa is one of a handful
of places in the world where you have a variety of shipwrecks to
dive. It all started in the 15th century when Portuguese explorers
rounded the southern tip of Africa and bravely took on the rugged
and extensive coastline of southern Africa. All of this was done to
find a trading sea-route to the East. |
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King Joăo (John) II of Portugal was determined to find a sea route
to India via the southern tip of Africa. Europeans wanted to trade directly with India and the other parts of
Asia, bypassing the overland route through of the Middle East with
its expensive middle men. On October 10, 1486 the king appointed
Bartolomeu Dias as the head of an expedition to sail around the
southern end of Africa. After Dias entered what we now know as
Walvis Bay on his map, a large storm hit and he lost sight of the
coast. He
thus sailed around the southern tip of Africa without even realising
it.
Once it had become clear that India could be reached by sailing
north up the coast, he turned back. It was only on the return voyage
that he discovered the Cape of Good Hope in May 1488 and he named it
the the Cape of Storms. |
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For more than 500 years, thousands of ships from 37
different nations used this route to get to the east, stopping over
for fresh water and food in the
Cape of Storms until the
opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. The canal linked the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea allowing
direct trade with the East. Its opening in 1869 negated the need
for much of the ship traffic around the southern tip of Africa. |
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Ships from all over the world,
including Portugal, Holland, England, France and India reached their
final destination on the bottom of our oceans. And today a variety
of ships from fishing, whaling, mining, agricultural and war ships
can be dived in our waters. |
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Even traces of pirates in our waters have been
found. In the 1700s, the Sainte Marie Island
became the port of registry of more than twenty vessels, and the
place of dwelling of more than 1 500 pirates. Today you can visit a
cemetery, the place for the eternal rest of adventurers of the
southern seas. One of the funerary stones carries a well known
emblem – a skull and two crossed tibias.
Wrecks in our waters were often the result of bad
weather, bad seaman or collisions with pinnacles rising from the sea
bed. In the years that
ships have circumnavigation Africa,
archival research has already
identified more than 2 700 vessels known to have been lost around
our coast. It is estimated that further research will raise the
number of known casualties closer to the 3 000 mark. |
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historical shipwrecks therefore represent a
fragile, non-renewable resource that is of immense national and
international archaeological and cultural significance, and which
must be carefully managed to ensure its long term survival. |
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